common cause. And in our own country we have not always military establishments ani We have had pension scan

found the connection between military virtues a constant one. dals, and we are not sure that army expeditions have always been wisely made. Why is it? Simply because our hearts have not been in it. wrongly, we have not felt the importance of military provisions, and so we have neglected them and have allowed to grow up briers as well as virtues in the military patch.

Rightly or

And again it would be very unfortunate if we should argue from the values of voluntary military service to the same values in compulsory service. A goodly number of our young men, inspired with enthusiasm for a cause, have taken the training of summer camps. And there can be no doubt that they have learned many valuable lessons (though I gather that the science of logic is not included in the curriculum). Any man who gives himself heart and soul and body to a cause will develop strength and loyalty and endurance. But it does not follow that he who does the same task unwillingly, whether lazily or because sober judgment condemns the work, will secure the same advantage. And the essential weakness of the proposal of compulsory military training is just thisthat it hopes to train our young men by compelling them to do something which the sober common sense of our people does not yet think it necessary to have done. Quite apart from the desirability of such a venture, whether in itself one approves it or not, as a piece of practical school teaching, it seems to me inevitably doomed to failure. The argument for it is based on false analogies. The virtues it seeks are wel! worth seeking, but the road suggested would not, I think, lead to them, but rather to national disappointment and regret.

Ever since William James began the search for the Moral Equivalent of War we have been seeking some activity which would fuse us together as a people just as the peoples of Europe are now become living flames of fury and zeal. "How," we have been asking, "shall we keep the virtues of the tiger, but let the tiger die?" And to this question one person may give one answer and another another, without noting a certain

fallacy in the question itself. Is it not the plain truth that you can not have the virtues of the tiger unless you are the tiger, do as he does, feel as he feels, live as he lives? And it is my impression that most of these proposals for the integration of our national life are at this point begging the question. "How shall we achieve the unity of a European nation; by what machinery shall it be done?" It may be that it is not to be done at all, that it is a unity which we do not desire or at least for which we are not willing to pay the price which is demanded. We have not as a people lived in relations of attack and defense, of fear and hostility, with our neighbors. And if we are not to come into such relations we shall not develop the virtues which grow from them. But we have great tasks before us-the tasks of a nation's inner life, and here it is that our virtues as we develop them are to be found. I do not believe that by any great miracle this people is to be integrated, is to be fused into a single Will. A war might do it but we hope that we shall not have a war. But lacking that we must win our unity not by some miracle of will, but by growing understanding of each other, by growing considerateness for our fellow citizens.

It seems to me that our hope lies not so much in the growth of a Will as in the development of a Mind, so that by our understanding of each other we shall learn to will together. We are suffering, I think, from volitionism-the notion that if only you desire to do something and try to do it, you will find, first, that you can do it, and second, that it is worth doing. Against that volitionism, for the sake of balance, our schools and colleges must oppose intellectualism, the eagerness to know and to understand so that the right things rather than the wrong may be done.

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THE SWISS MILITARY SYSTEM AND ITS ADAPTABILITY TO THE UNITED STATES1

THEODORE A. CHRISTEN

Former Officer in the Swiss Army; Former Member Ohio National Guard

T

HE Swiss Military System is based upon the fundamental principle of obligation for all, and on common sense, uninterrupted effort and the hearty coöperation and approval of the entire nation, combined with and reenforced by the most intricate and painstaking attention to details. These few characteristics form the basis of the organization of the defensive strength of the Swiss, and they have worked in such a way that when the great test came they met all the expectations which the Swiss people had in them.

The government of the Swiss republic, watchful and aware of the difficulty presented by the Austrian ultimatum to Servia on July 23, 1914, decided upon the most momentous step they had taken in many a decade-the complete mobilization of the national forces. The decree of mobilization was published on August 1st, our national holiday, on which we celebrate in our simple way the anniversary of that first meeting of representatives of the small mountain cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden in 1291, for formation of an alliance for the defense of their rights and preservation of their liberties. On this first Saturday of August, 1914, every man up to the age of forty-eight, who had ever had military training and was enrolled in a unit of the army, was called out for Monday morning, August 3rd, at 9 o'clock. Even on the same day the local landstrum—that is, the older men not members of any troop in the army, and the youths of sixteen to nineteen, who had undergone rudimentary training with the rifle were mobilized for the protection of railroad tunnels, bridges, stations, and at once took over these guard duties.

1 Address at the afternoon meeting of the Academy on May 18, 1916.

2

On August 2d, the railroads of the country were still open for civilian travel. All the soldiers and officers who lived away from their appointed places of assembling returned to their homes, and on Monday morning at 9 o'clock everybody was at his post. From the distant chalets in the high mountains, from the farms on the creeks and in the level lands, from the factories and work shops, from the houses of the wealthy and the dwellings of the poor, thousands upon thousands poured out to the public places of the little towns or to some meadow in a village where they knew they had to assemble. Each one was armed and equipped, ready from head to foot. At the same time the horses and wagons, which even in peace time in Switzerland are registered for just such an emergency and for nothing else, were brought out, examined and taken over by committees of experts, former cavalry officers and veterinary surgeons, appointed beforehand for that purpose. The supernumerary horses went into horse depots, to be immediately available for use in the army and to replace those used up.

After the assemblage was completed, concentration of the smaller units (battalions of infantry, batteries of artillery, squadrons of cavalry) into larger units (brigades, divisions and army corps) began on the same day. The railroads stopped for civilian travel and transportation, and completed the work of mobilization by carrying to the exposed posts on the frontier, on time tables long before prepared by the general staff, the army fully organized, equipped and officered from the highest command down to the men in the ranks. The work of putting them into a state of defense by building observation towers, digging trenches, executing field fortifications began at once. At some places the building of new roads or the enlarging of old ones was undertaken by the soldiers, obstacles to the defense were removed, at one place even a forest was cut down-all this on plans and orders long before prepared.

In the meantime our powerful neighbors who were to enter. the war themselves as belligerents had started their mobilizations also but ours was completed before theirs, and we know

of proclamations posted in parts of southern Germany, where a surprise attack through Swiss territory from France was possible, telling the people that such need not be feared for the Swiss army was quite ready to prevent such a surprise. The success of the mobilization was thus complete. forty-eight hours the full strength of the army had been assembled and transported with all the reserves, all the equipment, all the horses, to the full number of three hundred thousand men.1

In

This saved the country. Had we not been able to shut the door that led to the neighbors' domain, those neighbors would have had to come in and in self-protection close it against their enemies. It would have been a race between France and Germany as to who would get to Switzerland first. In September, 1912, the German Emperor, with General von Moltke and other members of his General Staff, attended the maneuvers of the Swiss army. These maneuvers, which I had the privilege to follow personally as an officer in civilian state, were on a large scale and were very inspiring. His Majesty, whom I saw at such close range as to hear his voice, was very favorably impressed with the troops, the organization and the leadership. A short time afterward he told "Somebody that is some man, woman or child—“ somewhere in Europe' that another route to France would be chosen." That Somebody "-man. woman or child-repeated the words to Somebody whom I know" and from whom I have it; it is more than plausible that to the trained eyes of the "War Lord" and his suite the endurance and earnestness of effort and the spirit which animates the Swiss soldiers and officersto the officers he paid the highly appreciated military compliment of schneidig (alert, energetic, spick-and-span)—was an indication of the kind of resistance they would be not only willing but able to offer.

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'Three hundred thousand is a fairly conservative estimate. The official figures of the government are not known. Some experts claim that the mobilization yielded even larger numbers, some going as high as 425,000. We will have to await the official report of the General Staff after the termination of the war.